F OR reasons stIl1 not wholly known and understood, the grand alliance of the Second World War broke up almost as soon as vic- tory was won, and the powers that had called themselves "the United Nations" fell into the pattern of hostility, peri- odic crisis, and "limited" war that has characterized world politics for the last twenty-five years. At Yalta in Febru- ary, ] 945, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union pledged to maintain and strengthen in peace the "unity of purpose and of action" that was bringing victory in war. Just over two years later, on March 12, 1947, Presiden t Truman proclaimed the doc- trine that came to be recognized as the basic rationale, from the American standpoint, for the Cold War. President Truman based the appeal he made to Congress for support of Greece and Turkey not primarily on the specific circumstances of those two countries at that time but on a general formulation of the American national interest which held that "totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States." PresI- dent Truman went on to say that at that moment in world history "nearly every nation must choose between al- ternative ways of life" -the one based on democratic institutions, like our own, and the other based on "terror and oppression," for which the model, of course, was the Soviet Union. Most of us thought 'we knew how and why this great transition-from "unity of purpose and of action" to Truman's declaration of. ideological warfare-had come about in so short a time. The cause was Soviet Commu- nist aggression, limited at the outset to Stalin's subjugation of Eastern Europe but shown by Marxist-Leninist doctrine to be universal in design, aimed at nothing less than the Communization of the world. American policy and opinion were profoundly influenced in the early postwar period by the thesis that George Kennan, signing himself "X," set forth in Foreign Affairs for Julv, 1947, which depicted Soviet pol- icy as relentlessly expansionist, com- mitted by a fanatical ideology to fillIng "ever) nook and cranny available. . . in the basIn of world power," and "stopping only when it meets with some unanswerable force." Warning against bluster and excessive reliance REFLECTIONS IN THR.ALL TO FEAR. on military force, Kennan nonetheless called for an American policy of "unal- terable counter force," of "firm and vigilant contaInment," which he antici- pa ted would "increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate," and encourage changes with- in Russia leading to "either the break- up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet " power. From Korea to Berlin to Cuba to VIetnam, the Truman Doctrine gov- erned America's response to the Com- munist world. Tactics changed-from " . 1 .." " 1 .. d " maSSIve reta IatIon to ImIte war d " . " b h an countennsurgency - ut t ese were variations on a classic formula- tion based on assumptIons that few really questIoned. Sustained by an inert Congress, the policymakers of the for- ties, fifties, and early sixties were never compelled to reëxamlne the premises of the Truman Doctrine, or even to de- fend them In constructive adversary proceedings. Change has come not from wisdom but from dIsaster. The calamitous fail- ure of American policy in Vietnam has induced on the part of scholars, jour- nalists, and politicians a belated willing- ness to reëxamine the basic assumptions of American postwar polIcy. Induced by the agitations of the present mo- ment, this new look at old events may well result in an excess of revision, or of emotion, but the corrective is much needed if we are to profit from experi- ence and recast our policies. It cannot be saId that the assumptions underlying the Truman Doctrine were wholly false, especiallv for their time and place. But there is a powerful presumptive case against their subsequent universal application-the case denving from the disaster of our policy in Asia-and it seems appropriate to look back and try to discover how and why the promise 0:. ".' oQo /' 4 " ; ,.. ",.., ..... "&'<r ",' -: ''; ... .. ... ill .- .:-:. :. .. ". . #,. ; .. . . ill .. .., "' .. .. I \ .. 'II- ... "'" .. , '" . # 41 of the "IT nited Nations Charter gave way so quickly to ideological warfare between East and West. U NTIL faIrly recently, I accepted the conventional view that the United States had acted in good faith to make the United Nations work but that the Charter was undermined by the Soviet veto. In retrospect, this seems Jess certain, and one suspects now that, like the League of Nations before it, the United Nations was orphaned at birth. Whereas Woodrow Wilson's great creation was abandoned to skep- tical Europeans, Franklin Roosevelt's pro j ect was consigned to the care of unsympathetic men of hIs own country. Presiden t Roosevelt died only two weeks before the openIng of the meet- ing in San Francisco at which the United Nations was organized. Tru- man, as a new and inexperienced Pres- Ident, was naturally more dependent on l11s advIsers than President Roosevelt had been; among these, so far as 1 know, none was a strong supporter of the plan for a world organization, as Cordell Hull had been. The Under- Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, was assIgned to lobby for Senate approval of the United Nations Charter, and he recalled later that "1 did my duty faithfully and successfully, but always believed that the Charter was impracti- cal." And, with even greater aspenty and candor, he told an interviewer in 1 970, "1 never thought the UnIted Nations was worth a damn. To a lot of people it was a Holy Grail, and those who set store by it had the misfortune to believe their own bunk" Disdaining the United Nations, the framers of the Truman Doctrine also nurtured an intense hostility toward Communism and the Soviet Union. Stalin, of course, did much to earn thIS hostility, with his paranoiac suspicious- ness, the imposition of Soviet domina- tion In Eastern Europe, and the USe of W e tern Communist parties as in- strumen ts of Soviet policy. All this is well known. Less well known, far more puzzling, and also more pertinent to our position in the world today is the eagerness with which we seized upon postwar Soviet provocatIons and plunged into the Cold War. If It be granted that Stalin started the Cold War, it must also be recognized that the Truman Administration seemed to welcome It. By early 1947-a year and a half